Abstract
InRegulating the Poor Piven and Cloward touched off controvery among academicians when they argued that the poor benefitted from civil turmoil. Those who believed that violence of any sort was wrong were inclined to believe that violence must also be ineffective. Studies done on the thesis repeatedly concluded that civil turmoil did help to advance the interests of the poor. Pluralists continued to argue that government responded to needs, not demands. For the twenty years following publication ofRegulating the Poor nothing like the urban riots of the sixties occurred in U.S. cities. Piven and Cloward had argued that “a placid poor hardly constitute a political constituency whose interests must be taken seriously”.1 To what extent has recent history shown that the state will respond to the needs of the poor even in the absence of turmoil?
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Davey, J.D. The fate of the placid poor. Crime Law Soc Change 22, 79–94 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01300840
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01300840